Malaysia Searches for Survivors After Boat Sinks

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Five people died when an overloaded wooden passenger ship carrying 97 Indonesians back to their home country sank off the west coast of Malaysia early Wednesday, Malaysian officials said, and search-and-rescue teams were working into the night looking for 32 others who remained missing.

By evening, 60 passengers had been rescued and five bodies recovered, an official with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said by telephone. The official, who declined to give his name, said the vessel began taking on water shortly after setting off on a river in the Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve in the southwestern state of Selangor. It is believed to have drifted into the Strait of Malacca before sinking about 1,000 feet off the coast.

“We will proceed until we find all the victims, but after sunset we will minimize our assets in the search” because of darkness, the official said.

Lt. Raimi Nor, an investigations officer with the maritime agency, said earlier Wednesday that the ship had illegally set sail around midnight Tuesday from Kuala Langat district in Selangor. The agency received a distress call at 12:45 a.m. Wednesday, he said.

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Rescue workers carrying the body of one of the victims from an Indonesian boat that sank near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday.CreditAzhar Rahim/European Pressphoto Agency

“Last night, the weather was rough, and the boat was in bad condition,” Lieutenant Raimi said. “They were overloaded.”

“They didn’t have a manifest list,” he added, “so we don’t know how many are passengers and how many are the crew.”

Lieutenant Raimi said that the Malaysian authorities believed the ship was based in Indonesia and that the passengers were illegal migrant workers traveling home. He said the authorities did not know their destination in Indonesia.

“That is still under investigation, but we believe most of them are migrant workers,” he said. “The information we do have is that they were all Indonesians, and the boat was an Indonesian boat.”

Malaysia, a relatively wealthy nation, is a destination point for migrant workers from around Southeast Asia.